


Spinner's Helper

by ishtarelisheba



Series: Spinner's Helper 'verse [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Blow Jobs, F/M, Spinner!Rumple, The Great Rumbelle Blow Off, also: sex and a touch of woobie angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 09:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6419011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle, whose father has recently fallen from grace and lost his title, has to seek out an apprenticeship to learn a trade so that she may take care of herself. She happens across a spinner in the marketplace and inserts herself into his life handily. Rumpelstiltskin, having never had an apprentice and not sure what to do now that one has apparently assigned herself to him, has to figure out what happens next. Especially when she moves beyond the spinning wheel.</p><p>For The Great Rumbelle Blow Off 2k16.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re a spinner?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked up, very nearly swallowing his tongue. He knew this girl. Well, he knew _of_ her. The knight’s lovely daughter. They were new to his village, she and her father, and new by necessity, not by choice. He’d seen them here and there, but summoning the temerity to speak in her presence had been a thing beyond him.

She had been walking from stall to stall all morning, doing her very best to convince someone - anyone - to give her a chance at an apprenticeship. He’d never expected her to stop at _his._

“Sir?” she asked.

“What? Ah- I- What is it that you need?” He recovered abysmally, having missed every word that came out of her mouth.

She looked tired, though, and she _had_ been roaming the marketplace since the first stalls went up. Surely she was asking for some refreshment, because there was nothing more he could offer that she could possibly want.

Thus, he offered, “I have water.”

“You have…” She gave him an odd look, and he knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and when he tried to swallow, his throat stuck together.

He waved a hand at her as he turned aside, choking, to fetch a sip of said water for himself before he suffocated to death as result of his own bumbling. When he could draw breath again, he held the waterskin out to her.

“No, but thank you.” She smiled, and he thought he might choke again. “I’m here to ask if I might apprentice with you.”

Three times he tried before he managed to get the cork back into the spout of the skin. “Ap- apprentice?”

“You are a spinner, are you not?” she asked, looking at the stacks of yarn on the small table between them. Each had been wound up and twisted around itself to form neat skeins. It looked as fine as any yarn she’d ever seen.

He nodded for a moment before he spoke. “I am.”

“Then an apprentice would be of great help to you!” She smiled brightly, leaning her hands on the table.

“Careful,” he said, his hands wavering hesitantly near hers. “It’s only that it- it isn’t terribly sturdy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized, quickly standing up straight.

“No, no, it’s all right.” He fidgeted anxiously, finger and thumb rubbing together. She shouldn’t be apologizing to the likes of him for anything at all. “Miss-”

“Belle. My name is Belle.” She shined that smile on him again.

“Of course, yes, Lady Belle. I can’t-”

“It isn’t ‘Lady’ any longer, but-”

“I- I can’t pay you. I have nothing to-”

“You don’t have to pay me!” Belle assured him, and it was obvious she’d taken this turn in their conversation for willingness to work with her. “When can I begin?”

She moved quickly, this girl. It left him grasping for words. “As soon as you’re ready, I suppose?”

“Wonderful!” She bounced a bit on the balls of her feet, clasping her hands together in front of her with glee. “Where do you live?”

“Live?” Oh. He felt himself shrink back a little inside. She would have to come around to his hovel to learn. Obviously she would. He pointed down the way she’d come. “The road from the market. You take it until you reach a fork, and you take the left road. You’ll come to a group of houses down that way. You’ll be looking for the only one with sheep.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me.” She reached out to grab the hand he pointed with before he could take it back. After giving it a squeeze and giving him yet another smile, she left.

He turned to look back at his son. The little boy peered at him from around the tall basket that his yarn made the trip from home to market in, a small yarn doll in his hand and two more sitting in front of him.

Rumpelstiltskin was left feeling more than a little flustered over the entire encounter. “Well, then. I suppose I have an apprentice, don’t I?”

“She was nice,” Baelfire said, grinning up at him.

He leaned to look down the marketplace path, watching as she swayed her way out, now that she’d achieved her day’s goal. One corner of his mouth tugged higher with a half smile. “Yes, she was.”

~o~o~o~

He’d only barely wakened Bae and gotten them both dressed for the day when there was a knock at their door.

“I’ll get it!” his son yelled, taking off from where Rumpel was attempting to get a sock on the boy’s foot.

“Now, Bae, wait a moment. We don’t know who that might be.”

Their rickety old door hinges gave a squeak and his son’s voice rang out before he could take his staff and follow. 

“Hi!” Bae said.

“Oh, hello… And what is your name?”

Rumpel stepped away from Bae’s little bed and there she was, smile warmer than the sun and carrying a basket filled with already teased and carded wool.

“This would be my son, Baelfire,” he said, handing his son’s sock down to him. “Who needs to finish getting dressed.”

“I need help with my boots,” Bae said, taking the sock and looking up at his Papa. 

Rumpel physically turned the boy around toward his bed. “And I’ll help. Go on, get your sock on and find your cloak.”

“I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have started out so early,” Belle said, her smile turning a bit sheepish.

“Oh, no, it’s quite all right.” He limped aside to invite her in. “Please. I’ll be a minute.”

He went back to help Bae with his boots, taking one small foot at a time onto his knee to tie the laces. Before they were done, there was another knock and a little girl’s voice from beyond the door. Bae squirmed impatiently while his father finished, and Rumpel patted his son on the back and sent him to answer his friend’s summons.

Shaking his head fondly, Rumpel joined the girl who was now apparently his apprentice where she stood next to the table. “Now, shall we talk ab-”

Bae ran over, tugging at his father’s sleeve. “Morraine wants to know if I can come outside.”

“You may, but stay close to the house,” he said, and Bae was halfway out before he’d finished. “Leave the door open so I can hear you!”

Bae only stopped for the half second it took to grab his ball from next to the door.

Belle smiled after the little boy. “He’s sweet.”

“He is, indeed,” Rumpel agreed, grinning at his son’s retreating form. “Now, about your lessons?”

“Yes! My lessons.” She took her basket from the floor next to her feet, taking a seat when he gestured to the chair next to her. “I have wool to work with, so I needn’t take up yours.”

He looked at her and she looked back expectantly. She was so kind and thoughtful, and he hadn’t the slightest idea why of all people she’d come to him. “Lady… why do you wish to be apprenticed? To _me?”_

“I must learn a trade,” she said, sounding practiced at it.

“Why would you wish to learn here, though? Surely there are trades you would enjoy more?” He loved his spinning, but that wasn’t precisely what he meant. Such a lovely girl, she couldn’t possibly be happy spending so much time in his little hovel. With him. Not for the great length of time it would take to instruct her in all of the ins and outs of working with wool.

“You never did give me your name,” she said instead of answering.

“Oh, I- I-” He hadn’t, he realized. He’d been so flustered over the sudden acquisition of an apprentice that he’d neglected to so much as tell her what to call him. “Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Rumpelstiltskin, my father has lost everything. And I…” Belle frowned, fiddling with the roving in front of her. “I was never taught anything of practical use. I can do lovely stitchwork. I know every dance popular over the last ten years, and I can hold conversation with practically anyone, but I have no knowledge of anything I might use to support myself. Now that things have fallen as they did, I may as well as been raised to end as a veal calf, and everyone knows it.”

The former Sir Maurice had been disgraced by the Duke for seeking help outside of their own realm to quell the war, after the Duke specifically commanded him to simply conscript more civilian subjects to augment his army. Afterward, Sir Maurice and his daughter couldn’t even afford to live in what had once been his own barony.

Gossip traveled quickly in a village as small as theirs, especially when it came to nobility. Every village for miles around knew of the fall of the Knight of the Marchlands.

“I’m spoiled and useless, and my nose stays in books. Or that’s what everyone believes.” Belle gave him an uncomfortable smile. “No one wants me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rumpel sputtered, shaking his head. “You- you’re- no one is useless.”

She took her hand from the basket and sighed. “Thank you, but you’ve not seen me at spinning quite yet. You might wish to wait on that judgment.”

“You wanted to begin right away?” he asked, and when she nodded, he turned away from the table. “Yes, yes, we can begin right away. You’ll see. No one is useless.”

He walked across to the corner where his loom sat, where wool draped to dry from the rafters when he washed a batch, and he set a basket of raw wool in the circle of his arm. Going back to the table, he placed it in front of her.

Belle blinked at it and looked up at him, then reached out to touch it. “It’s wool.”

“Aye,” he said, smiling at he pulled up the chair across from her. “It isn’t shorn from the sheep as clean as your basket of fluff.”

She took a piece and pulled it apart. “There are seeds in it. And grass, and… oh.”

“You can buy it cleaned from the market as you did, but you’re looking at four times the cost. If you’ve sheep of your own, it’s a bit more work, but far less coin.”

“All right,” she said, preparing herself. “Then it needs to be cleaned, correct?”

Rumpel nodded. “The first order of business. Sheared wool must be teased.” He pulled a hank free from the rest and held it out so that she could see the method of it. “You pull it apart a bit at a time, and you remove _anything_ that isn’t wool.”

She took a piece the size he illustrated with, and she began to carefully pick bits of detritus from it. Finding a bit of something that looked like a piece of broken stem, she pulled a lock of the wool open enough to reach in with her fingertips, and it was only when it pricked her that she discovered it was a thorn. Belle hissed in pain, and a bead of blood welled up between her fingernail and skin. 

“Oh, you must be careful. Sheep get into all manner of things,” Rumpel tutted, hurrying to fetch the box of healing supplies from the cupboard. “That would be Clover. She made a run for it in the spring. Bae chased her all over the village before he found her caught in a thorn bush.”

“It’s fine, really. I couldn’t very well work with something wrapped about my finger, anyway.”

“I can stop it hurting, at least,” he murmured. He unstoppered a small vial and tilted it until a drop fell onto her finger, making her jump. “It’s a bit of a sting, but it goes quickly. Better?”

“Much better.” She looked up at him, smiling. She had so many smiles to give, and he felt that he had so few.

It took a moment for him to realize that he still held her hand, at which point he let go as if he’d been burned. He returned to his side of the table, taking another piece of wool, and showed her again how to _carefully_ get the wool teased clean.


	2. Chapter 2

Each day, Belle walked from her father’s house on the other side of the village to Rumpelstiltskin’s house. Some mornings, she brought bread. Two loaves, still hot from their oven. Poor she may have been, but she had more than he did, and she couldn’t help wanting to give him _something_ for as much help as was providing her. No one had been so gracious to her as he had in all the months since her father had become a pauper. 

She didn’t touch a spinning wheel for her first month and a half of apprenticeship. He taught her to clean the wool, and he showed her how to wash it. She watched as he boiled the water off to harvest the bit of lanolin that was left behind, but that would remain a lesson to be taught in longer form the next time the sheep needed shearing - another task he promised to teach her. Spring shearing was long enough past that the rest of the wool had been washed already.

It took _days_ for the wool to dry. She’d never imagined it would take to long. During those days, she began learning to measure, wind, and twist yarn the way he did to take it to market. She could eventually create her own way to twist her yarn up, he’d said, but learning how to handle it was the important part for now.

Once the wool had dried, he taught her how to card it, and how to make roving. Her roving still needed a great deal of work, but Rumpelstiltskin had praised her carding so extensively that she’d been downright proud.

The previous evening, before she left so that she could be home before sunset, he had brought his older treadle wheel from the corner of the house to work on, himself. He scooted the newer one over to sit next to it, and he’d informed her that she would be learning on the newer wheel beginning the next day.

“Good morning, Rumpel! Good morning, Bae!” she greeted as she let herself in. She placed her basket on the table and took a large, napkin-wrapped parcel from it.

“Good morning,” Rumpelstiltskin responded, with a smaller, “Morning!” from Baelfire chimed right in the middle.

Rumpel walked over after he’d finished helping Bae with his boots, his staff thumping softly against the packed floor. “You needn’t do this,” he protested, knowing what she brought. She’d delivered many such parcels by now.

“I’m still getting accustomed to portions,” she excused, and when he grinned knowingly, she smiled in return. “All right, I’m getting accustomed to cooking at all. Still, I made far too much dough, which made _far_ too much bread, and it’ll only go stale before my father and I could eat it by ourselves. I would much rather you and Bae have it.”

He spent the morning showing her how the wheel itself worked, naming the parts of it for her and quizzing her on it. With no small amount of interest, she noticed how his shyness almost disappeared when he began teaching. By the time he showed her how to get started with the _actual_ act of spinning, she could name every part of the wheel and the light had settled into the glow of afternoon through the window.

Belle held a soft clump of roving in her left hand, feeding it in with her right. She concentrated, doing her very best to let the strand run in evenly. It broke.

“You remember how to patch it back together?” he asked from his seat next to her.

She nodded, taking her time in searching for the end that had wound its way around the bobbin. Joining it back with the end in her hand, she started treadling again and watched as the fiber began to twist its way into an admittedly lumpy yarn. Lumpy was all right, though, he’d told her. As long as she learned the lumps away as she gained experience.

Her strand broke again. She grumbled in annoyance and repeated the process. The length of her yarn went on longer, this time, before it broke yet again. Belle slapped her knee, and she set about rejoining the strand once more.

“You’re using too much tension,” Rumpel said. He used his hand to brake his wheel and turned on the stool to face her. “H- here. May I?”

When she nodded, he stood and picked up his stool with the hand not on his staff, placing it closer to hers.

“May I take your hands?” he asked softly.

Belle looked at him, nodding again. She could count on one hand with fingers left over how many times he’d touched her since she began working with him. Even with her permission, he hesitated to put his hands on hers, at first. 

She’d thought his hands would be rough and hard with calluses, as long as he had been a spinner. They were warm and soft, though, when they enveloped hers. Of course - the lanolin. Since she had been apprenticing, her hands had been as supple as they were when her maids had made sure to keep softening cream on them. 

“It will draw from the roving with almost a mind of its own, if you hold both hands properly,” he instructed.

He adjusted how tightly her fingers held the wool, and she moved those feeding the fiber in an imitation as perfectly close to his as she could manage. With his physical guidance, her thread went on unbroken. After a few moments, he slowly took his hands away.

“Keep at it, precisely like that,” Rumpel said softly, as if speaking too loudly might interrupt.

Belle beamed, and she whispered back to him, “I’m doing it…”

“That you are.”

“It’s still lumpy.”

“It’ll be for a while yet. As I said, the lumps work out as you learn,” he reassured. “Agrabah wasn’t built in a day.”

She knew that he sacrificed working on his own spinnings to sit by and quite literally hold her hand as she learned. But he sat so near that she could feel the warmth of his leg near hers, and she couldn’t bear to remind him.

~o~o~o~

On the first market day that she participated in as a fledgling spinster, Rumpel set out a few skeins of her yarn. There were still uneven places along the strands, but she’d gotten much better with her tension, and he’d deemed the skeins she chose to attempt to sell good overall. Fine enough for felted garments and household linens.

Belle stood over her three little twists of sheep-white yarn all morning. She gave everyone who passed by the stall a bright smile, just in case they might pause to have a look. Few did, and those who stopped were most often men who took the opportunity to flirt. Frustrated, she dismissed them as politely as she could.

“People tend to buy more after midday,” Rumpel said when she grew a bit snippy with a young man who invited her to ‘go snipe hunting’ with him. “They get a bit of market food in their bellies, and they remember that it’s a full day and a half of travel south to the next spinner.”

The slowest part of the day - for their side of the market, at least - hit around noon. There was barely a trickle of people wandering by as market-goers drifted toward the food stalls. Rumpel had brought along enough bread for the three of them to sate their hunger, thanks to Belle’s continued ‘confusion’ with recipe portions. She produced a small jar of honey from her basket to go with it, to Bae’s wide-eyed delight.

They sat on the blanket that Baelfire brought along on market days, and Rumpel was just getting back to his feet when a couple of men with the bearing of soldiers came over, stopping near the end of the stall.

“You mean the whore from the tavern last evening?” said a man of a thin and shaven-headed sort, loudly enough it was likely that all the stalls around could hear.

“Yeh,” the other - taller, burlier, and a great deal hairier - grunted. “One minute, there you sat with the trollop’s tongue in your ear, next you’d skipped out on your round. Left me to buy two in a row.”

The first man chuckled. “We didn’t go far. I took her out back. And then I _took her out back,_ if you catch my meaning.”

The burly one joined in the laughter. “S’pose it was worth catching your round, then!”

Belle pressed her lips together, standing to put the honey away. They could have gone somewhere not among the stalls, if they had to speak so crudely. A public market was hardly the place. She looked to Rumpel and found him pointing to Bae’s toys, asking what they were up to today. Distraction, she understood. He glanced up at her, then sent a frown over his shoulder at the pair.

“Hey, Spindleshanks,” said the second man, unfortunately having caught his look. “When is the last time you stuck it to your wife?”

“No, no, that’s not his wife. His wife _left,”_ the first said, joining in with a snicker. “Good couple years ago, if I remember right.”

The bearded one snapped his fingers in a pretense of having forgotten. “Oh, that’s right! Sorry about that.”

Clearly enjoying their nasty little production, the thin man went on. “His wife wouldn’t let him warm her bed for _years_ before she finally up and left. Why d’you think she kept a chair at the tavern hot?”

Rumpel’s face went bright red, though he tried to hide it. As badly as Belle wanted to tell the men to shut their mouths, she no longer had the standing to back up such a demand. It was better for everyone that she stayed quiet, though it made her grind her teeth to do so.

“It’s a wonder you managed to get that boy in the first place,” the bigger man said with a sneer. He looked back to his companion. “Always did wonder if that one was his, though.”

The first cracked up as if he thought the cruel remark was hilarious. “I’d be surprised if the pathetic thing ever so much as had his knob sucked. Wife probably would’ve had to search for it, even if she’d wanted to.” He stuck out his smallest finger, wiggling it.

Apparently finding this of some great interest, the burly one turned to look at Rumpelstiltskin straight on. “Have you?” he asked, and when his prey didn’t answer, he gave a kick to the worn table that the yarn sat upon.

Only Belle reaching to stop it from falling kept their work from landing in the dirt. She righted the table’s collapsible leg and kept a hand on it in the event that the lout tried again.

 _“Have_ you ever had your knob sucked, then?” he kept on.

Rumpel wouldn’t answer them, but the two men laughed as though his humiliated silence was answer enough.

The larger of the two clapped the thinner on the back, and they started away. “Sad bastard’s barely ever gotten it wet at all, I suspect!”

At last they left Rumpelstiltskin in peace, such as it was.

“They’re only a pair of buffoons who have no better decency than to cruelly use another person for their entertainment,” Belle said after a moment, though he wouldn’t look at her, either. “Fools such as they get their just deserts. Always.”

Rumpel shrugged, still hiding his face. “And perhaps they aren’t so foolish,” he muttered, taking a skein of yarn with its end straggling out and fixing it.

“Rumpel…” She tried to make him look at her, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but he turned away.

“You can work on learning the art of the sale today,” he said, going to sit on the cracked and beaten little stool in the back of the stall. “Bae can help with the patter, if you need.”

Belle knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to help her, if she required, but he needed some time to pull himself from his misery. She had never seen him so obviously upset, and it was the first time she’d had to bear witness to such mistreatment of him. Neither sat well with her.


	3. Chapter 3

“Lady Belle?”

She only vaguely heard him speak her name, and she was unsure how many times he’d called her. Her face turned pink at being caught lost in such deep thought that she’d let the wheel stop. At least she’d managed by some miracle not to break her thread.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. When she looked over at Rumpel, he gave her one of those lopsided smiles, and her blush deepened.

After hearing the terrible things that the brutes in the marketplace had said, she couldn’t help her curiosity. How often _had_ Rumpel been allowed to have marital relations with his wife?

Belle had been under the impression that people got up to things in bed quite often. Husbands and wives, sweethearts, anyone who took enough of a fancy to one another to want to get up to it… That was the way her maids had made it sound. Of course, _she’d_ been meant to wait until she had married the man her father chose for her, but they had made it sound as if the entire rest of the realm was up to it here, there, and yonder.

The way the men talked, Rumpel’s wife had scorned him. Perhaps even cuckolded him. She didn’t know _everything_ about him, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think why. There was the reputation he’d acquired - she wasn’t so oblivious to not have heard it - but still. He was kind. He was the gentlest man she’d ever crossed paths with. Belle wondered if perhaps his wife simply hadn’t enjoyed that sort of thing. She couldn’t imagine him pushing himself on anyone. It was a bit maddening, trying to put together the puzzle of him when it had so many missing pieces.

It all led her to wonder, though… What _was_ he like in bed? She’d caught herself having such thoughts at the most awkward of times and giving glances toward him that made her flush in ways that caused him to ask whether the house was too stuffy again when he caught her. It had been going on for weeks now, and she only hoped that her tendency toward blushing over it would pass before the summer did, or she would lose her excuse of overheating.

“Your single strands are coming along very well,” Rumpel praised.

Belle slid her hand along beneath the piece she’d been working at when she became distracted, drawing it back out from the bobbin a bit. The yarn was nice and slender, hardly a lump or bump or heavy spot in sight. It wasn’t yet as nice or as strong as his spinnings, but she was slowly getting closer. 

“Would you prefer to practice making roving?” he asked, giving her a grin when she wrinkled her nose at the mention of her least favorite task. “Or would you like to learn something new?”

She perked up. “New?”

“What do you think of trying your hand at spinning together a double ply?”

Rumpel sat next to her - an occurrence that had happened with less and less frequency as she got better at her work. He removed the bobbin she’d been filling, replacing it with an empty one.

“You must pay mind to your tension, now, or you’ll end up with yarn that tangles itself right out of the skein. It should stay wrapped tight together, but still be willing to lay limp across your hand. You’ll see,” he said as he showed her how to wind a bit of one strand onto the empty bobbin. He had her tie the second strand of yarn to the first, then helped her to wind the knot onto the bobbin before she could put her foot to the treadle.

Belle had to spin a bit, stop, and check the tension repeatedly. She found it almost more difficult than learning the tension on spinning a single thread in the first place. When she spun from roving, at least she could tell by sight how well she did at keeping the tension even. Figuring it out on two plys together felt near impossible. She could easily tell when it was too loose, but only checking told her that it was too tight - which, more often than not, it was.

It was perhaps the tenth time she stopped the wheel to check, and the strands still wadded themselves up like an angry spider. She dropped it to rub at her forehead.

“It takes a great deal of practice,” Rumpel comforted. “You’ll catch on.”

Belle pulled a good length of the yarn back out working to fix the tension in it by hand. “Some days, I believe the wool simply doesn’t like me.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s possible.” He smiled when she looked over at him, and it set off a flutter deep in her stomach. “Sh- shall I- Do you want me to help you find the right tension?”

“Yes, please,” she accepted with relief of more than one sort.

He covered her hands with his and she let him guide her. With his left hand, he held two of her fingers between the strands she meant to spin together, and their right hands held both strands where they twisted on their way onto the bobbin. He held her hands for a good while before letting go.

Belle kept her tension as he’d demonstrated, and when she stopped to check after a few moments, the yarn lay flat as could be on her hand.

“There you go!” Rumpel said, sitting back.

Belle grinned over at him. “And now the trick will be repeating these results every other time.”

“Well, you know where I’ll be if you need help.” He stood, taking himself and his spinning stool back to the wheel that sat less than two feet to her right.

Too late, the idea occurred to her that she might purposefully sabotage her tension to keep him closer.


	4. Chapter 4

Even at home, her fantasies - and they _had_ worsened to downright fantasies - persisted in distracting her. When her father asked how her apprenticeship progressed, she could hardly keep the breadth of her smile under control.

Belle thought of Rumpel’s body, wondering about it. She wondered if he was so slender by nature, or whether bare cupboards had starved him thin. Had he once had more weight on his bones? He was small, but he was strong, and she had a growing number of moments during which she imagined what it would be like to feel his touch on her skin for purposes far more gratifying than simply guiding her hands at spinning.

Once, she’d have guarded her reputation jealously. She would have resisted carnal thoughts. Well, she’d have pretended so, at least. She would have picked up some innocent book to show herself disinterested. Or she’d have waited until she was in private with her maids and giggled herself silly over the details of it, depending on the day. What reputation did she have to protect now, though? Her father had been forced to surrender most of their belongings and every property to his name, until they had only enough to live in a house little better than Rumpel’s.

Why _shouldn’t_ she pursue what she wanted? Why not follow her heart toward the sweetest man she had ever known? He was such a vast improvement over the noblemen her father had been considering for her that she felt a bit weak with relief over the idea of choosing him.

Her only stumbling block was her lack of surety as to how _he_ felt about her. Shy and awkward as he often seemed around her, she found herself wondering how in the world his first wife had drawn him out of his shell long enough to end up married to him at all.

Autumn leaves carpeted the outdoors, having left their trees to make room for eventual new life in the new year. It also meant that the cheerful squeals and laughter coming from children in the village increased tenfold upon discovering those piles of leaves. Rumpelstiltskin could pick his son’s sounds from among all the rest.

Bae was already outdoors when Belle arrived, calling her customary, “Good morning!” to the boy before she came into the house and repeated it to Rumpel.

“Honey!” she said, and he gave an owlish blink up at her.

It took him two full heartbeats to realize that she held a jar out to him. He finally lifted a hand to take it.

“A neighbor gave me a couple of jars, and we have plenty already, and Bae enjoys it so much when I bring some around,” she explained quickly, cutting off any protests he might make about her generosity. She knew there wasn’t much that he would turn down, if she brought Bae into it, and she was glad when he accepted the honey.

“Thank you, Lady Belle,” he said, setting it aside on the table. “I’ll have to hide it to keep him from eating the entire jar full with his fingers.”

“Oh, both of you could do with a full jar of honey now and then,” she teased, and the grin he gave her in return was all the reward she could have hoped for. “You promised to teach me something new today.”

“Ah, something _a bit_ new,” he said, rising from his chair at the table. He beckoned her along to where the two wheels stood side-by-side just to the right of the fireplace.

Belle draped her flowered cloak over the chair he’d left and she followed him, taking her place behind the spinning wheel she’d grown to know over these past months. “It isn’t something awful, is it? You aren’t going to have me spin three plys, or anything like that?”

He shook his head, giving her a fond smile. “No, I wouldn’t inflict such torture. Today, you’ll begin learning to spin lighter weight yarn,” he told her with a shake of his finger.

She picked up a bit of roving, getting everything ready as far as she could. She couldn’t say she’d _perfected_ the plain, utilitarian strand of yarn she had thus far learned, but she no longer had skeins full of lumps. Her yarn had been selling right alongside his in the market stall, and she’d been able to put a few coins away at a time to save for a spinning wheel of her own someday. Spinning something much finer worried her all over again, though.

“Do you think you can work it out on your own?” Rumpel asked. He had no doubt that she could, eventually, but she seemed to catch on better and more quickly when he stepped in to show her.

Belle looked over at him, mouth open and brow drawn a bit.

“I’ll help you, if you need,” he said, and she nodded back to him. “Don’t try to spin it as thin as possible straight away. Go at it gradually.”

“How thin a strand am I meant to aim for?” she asked.

“Thin enough to be suited to warm weather clothing and, ah… nice underthings.” He murmured the end of his sentence, not quite looking at her.

Belle sighed. She would have to go through the breaking of strand after strand again, she knew it. With everything prepared, she began, trying to figure out the tension and treadle speed to thin her thread.

He watched her from the corner of his eye. If nothing else, Belle had become a veritable expert at repairing broken ends of a strand. He said nothing until she seemed on the verge of swearing a streak of oaths. 

“Shall I-” he got out before she cut in.

“Yes, please!” Belle dropped her hands and roving into her lap. She’d reached a line in her frustration.

Rumpel resisted the grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth. He took his stool and limped to the other side of her, sitting down close by her side. “All right, first thing-”

“The tension. Always the tension,” she supplied.

“Aye, the tension. But in this case, it’s equally as important to pay mind to how much roving you allow it to take. You’ll need to let through a wee bit less wool as the wheel tries to take it from you. Hold _both_ hands a bit more tightly.”

Belle nodded, taking in his lesson. “Show me?” she asked.

He leaned close, taking her hands in his. “Treadle,” he said, and she began moving her foot to get the wheel up to speed.

Rumpelstiltskin enjoyed this - this sitting near her, holding her hands. It wasn’t the easiest way, but it worked. The easier way was too tempting and surely unwanted. He couldn’t very well sit with her between his legs, his arms wrapped around her. As it was, he hoped that she couldn’t feel his heart pounding right through his palms.

He adjusted her hands inside his until the way the wool fed in _felt_ right. That was the thing of it. He couldn’t _tell_ someone how to adjust the tension in their fingers, or how much wool to allow through. He had an odd instinct for it, and showing her in this way was all he knew to help her get it just right. There were very few things he was good at, and he was only glad that something useful as a trade was among them. It fed and clothed he and his boy, even if only barely, at times. And it had brought Belle into his life for however long her presence might last.

Belle leaned toward him by the slightest degree. She felt a sudden, peculiar need to lean into him, but he held himself too far away for her to manage any further contact. She had an errant thought about pulling him closer by his hands, and she wondered how he would respond to such an action.

She found herself _so badly_ wanting to kiss him. A kiss didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. His face was a bit scruffy, perhaps from lack of a properly sharpened blade, but his lips looked soft. And he smelled nice, if wild.

In her thoughts, she grew distracted, and the wheel went beyond her control as her attention slipped. She was treadling too quickly and her hands went too slack for her lack of concentration, and the strand that Rumpel had helped her to get going yanked the small piece of wool left in her hand from her grasp before she could stop it.

“Oh!” she fussed, stopping the entire contraption.

“It’s all right,” he said, leaning to reach in and untangle the hank of wool from the bobbin. “It happens to the best of us.”

“I’m sorry. I got distracted,” Belle apologized. “I was thinking, and- Well, it just goes to show, I don’t have to have my face in a book to have a mishap.”

“Don’t worry over it. Spinning is the best place to sort your thoughts, in my experience.” He turned his head to look at her as he spoke.

Belle’s body acted without entirely complete input from her mind as she leaned down to kiss him.

He seemed amenable to her kiss, at first. His lips were as soft as she’d imagined. They were yielding and his breath was warm, and his nose pressed against her cheek in a way that made her want to grab him and hold him right where he was.

Just as quickly as it seemed to happen, it stopped. Rumpelstiltskin jumped away from her with such urgency that he knocked his stool over and nearly sent the spinning wheel toppling - and it would have, had she not enough reflex to grab it.

He stammered a bit, only a short string of vowel sounds making it out of his mouth, before he gasped something about going to see about Bae and hurried out.

Belle huffed at the door that he left standing wide, then turned back to the spinning wheel with a deeper sigh. Well. _That_ had gone splendidly.

The rest of the day went awkwardly from there. When he finally returned, he first asked if she needed further help. She could do nothing but tell him that she thought she had it. After his reaction, she’d have felt badly about making him help her so closely again so soon.

Bright and early the next morning, she walked back to Rumpel’s house. She was determined to show him that what had happened the day before hadn’t affected how she wanted to apprentice with him. If that was all she could have, then she would make the most of it. She would be the very best apprentice that he could hope for.

He’d shaven, and shaven clean. It was the first thing she noticed when she went inside. He sat at the table, staff leaned next to him, and he stood when she set her basket down.

Letting her heart outrule her head, Belle stepped close, looking up at him. She raised onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek, and though he colored so that she could feel it heating his face, he - perhaps by some miracle - didn’t bolt from the room.

~o~o~o~

 _She’d kissed him._ She hadn’t kissed him on the lips since, likely owing to the way in which he’d behaved the first time, but there had been at least one kiss to his cheek each day between that moment in early autumn and this one. He wasn’t quite sure what to think about it. Could he assume that she didn’t find him repellent? He had not the first idea what she could want of him in exchange for her kisses, and it made him a bit nervous.

Oh, but he adored them, though. The soft, warm presses of her lips to his skin. He’d found himself shaving more often in hopes of inviting her to continue giving them. And since that initial kiss, she’d begun touching him. Gentle touches here and there. A hand on his arm when she asked for his attention or told him a story. Her hands finding his shoulders or back when she had to pass behind him. He’d stopped breathing for an entire minute on the occasion she dropped a bobbin and rested her hand on his knee as she leaned down to retrieve it. He had begun to crave those little touches, and he would be lying if he didn’t admit to himself that it frightened him a bit to have so quickly found need for them.

The marketplace had been crowded since dawn. Rumpel had made certain to bring along as much yarn as possible - festival days brought in more people, which meant selling more. Festival sales gave he and Bae a few weeks of truly full stomachs, where the market days in between just kept them alive.

A bonfire was at the end of its assembly in the open space just beyond the stalls, being readied to celebrate once sunset arrived. They had been watching its construction all day from Rumpel’s stall, and it was nearly ready to be lit for those celebrating the last harvest festival of the year.

“You’ll teach me how to dye, won’t you?” Belle picked up a skein of yarn he’d steeped with snakeweed to color it a lovely sunflower yellow.

“Of course,” he agreed, pleased that she wanted him to. He would teach her everything he knew, if she wanted. “That’s a lesson for a bit later on, though.”

“Papa,” Bae said, leaning against his father’s hip.

She beamed. “You forage most of your dyes?”

Rumpel reached to rest a hand on Bae’s back. “There are a few ingredients that must be saved for and bought, but most of it we find in the forest around the village.”

“Papa?”

“Can you make blues?” Belle asked.

“I know how to get the dye going, but it’s been many a year since I have done. The best plants for it don’t grow around-”

“Papa?”

He looked down to find his son’s big brown eyes shining up at him. They’d been over this all day, from the moment Bae learned that there was to be a celebration.

“Can’t we stay?” Bae pled. “Everyone else is staying.”

“Not this year,” Rumpel told him yet again.

“But Papa-”

Belle had witnessed similar exchanges practically since they’d set the table up early this morning. She’d stayed out of it thus far, but Baelfire wanted so badly to go. “You don’t attend?”

Bae grumped, plopping back down with his toys. “We used to.”

“It’s been a year or two,” Rumpel said, glancing back at his son. It was obvious that he hated denying the boy. “We… It hasn’t felt like a terribly celebratory season, of late.”

Belle wondered if it might have been around this time of year that his wife left. She wouldn’t jab a finger into that wound by asking, though. Others did so more than enough.

“I was thinking that I might go,” she said. “I’ve never been to a proper harvest festival.”

Rumpel shifted his attention back to her. “Never?”

She shook her head. “My father’s clerics didn’t allow it. They didn’t believe such a celebration was befitting nobility.”

“Oh.” He fiddled with the way the yarn was arranged. “Well, it’s- it’s a nice bonfire. You think you might go, eh?” he asked, looking up at her again.

“I was considering it.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m not certain that I should go alone, though.”

Belle felt him watching her as she put the skein of rich yellow yarn back. She knew that particular silence in him by now. It was different from the silence he fell into when he didn’t wish to talk about something.

“If you want to go… then perhaps… Bae and I might stay for it, as well,” he offered tentatively. “So that you wouldn’t be alone.”

Baelfire hopped up, reappearing beside his father. “We can go?”

Belle smiled, letting go of her lip. “You would do that for me?”

“Well, it _is_ important, as far as preparing for the dark of winter, I suppose.”

Bae gave a little whoop, tugging on his Papa’s tunic in excitement.

“As for you,” Rumpel said to his son, “You’ll keep right next to me. There are strangers about, and I don’t want you wandering off. Not even with Morraine.”

Bae agreed quickly.

“Go and put your toys and blanket in your bag. We have to pack up the stall before we can do anything else, festival or not.”

Belle watched the boy skip back over to the spot he always made for himself. She smiled up at Rumpel and reached for his hand, enjoying the look of surprise that crossed his face as she took it.


	5. Chapter 5

Snowflakes had been drifting down since sometime before he woke his son that morning, though none seemed to stick to the ground. Bae had been cooped up with Belle and himself as they worked on making roving, and the boy was none too happy about it, if his begging to go to Morraine’s across the way was any indication. He’d had a bit of a cough the last few mornings, though, and Rumpel had worried that he was going to get ill.

“What if I run straight over and I don’t go outside _at all_ until time to come home?” he asked, hovering at his father’s shoulder and leaning on him. _“Please?”_

“Bae…” Rumpel sighed, giving his son as admonishing a look as he could summon up. “Straight there. Not a foot stepped outside their door. And you play near the hearth where it’s warm, if you can.”

“Yes, Papa!” Bae agreed, and he ran to bundle up for the walk over.

Belle looked down at the wool in her hands, hiding her grin as Rumpel stood at the door to make sure that Bae didn’t set off after a wild hare or some such. He was a soft touch where his son was concerned. She was a bit proud of Baelfire for not taking more advantage of it than he did.

It was after midday when the snow went from a modest flurry to a fall so heavy that they could barely see from the window. Not long after it began, there was a knock at the door. Rumpel answered it to find Morraine’s mother.

“Is it all right if Bae stays until the snow stops?” she asked, pulling her scarf down from her mouth so that she could be understood. “He said that you didn’t want him outdoors, and I thought perhaps, since the weather has worsened.”

Rumpel looked past her, as if he could see his son through the front of their house. “I suppose,” he replied after a moment.

Bae had stayed the odd night with Morraine’s family before, though it was usually when their cupboards were so bare that there would be no meal for his son otherwise. He’d have a good supper, a warm place to sleep, and a good breakfast in the morning.

“Make sure he keeps warm?” Rumpel said.

“I will.” The woman smiled, pulling her scarf back up and waving as she started across again.

He didn’t enjoy spending nights alone, but he’d rather be a bit lonely than have Bae fall ill. It was snowing too heavily for man nor beast to be safe in, and piling higher every minute.

When it neared time for Belle to go home, she went from the window to the door, peering out with a frown. She couldn’t so much as see the road. If she couldn’t see the road, then she wouldn’t be able to see the houses from it, and she feared getting lost on her way.

“Rumpel,” she began, fidgeting with the clasp of the cloak she’d already donned. “Would it be a bother if I waited out the storm?”

His heart thumped at the thought of having her there with him. He knew that it was an inconvenience for her, but it would stave off his loneliness to have Belle to talk with. “It wouldn’t be a bother at all.”

“I’ve never been out in such snow before,” she said, pushing down her hood and putting her cloak over the back of his chair again.

He got up from his spinning wheel, going to add another few branches to the fire to make the house a little warmer and prepare to make them something to eat. He only had enough to make a meager soup, but thanks to Belle, there was fresh bread. At least they wouldn’t go hungry tonight.

She insisted on helping him with supper, so he set her chopping things, as small a task as that was. The soup turned out to be a bit more meager than he’d expected - not quite enough to fill two hungry bellies. He filled Belle’s bowl and took only a little for himself. If Bae were there, he would have made an excuse to not eat at all and let his son have the lot. He was too small yet to catch on to his father’s ploy every few suppers. 

Belle’s eye was sharper, though. She saw anyway, and she picked up bits from her bowl to place into his across the table. “I’m not fond of potatoes,” she said airily when he gave her a look.

He knew her excuse for a lie. When she sold enough skeins to have extra, the first thing she bought was a basket of potatoes from the vegetable stall across the path from them. 

She chattered about her neighbors over the meal, and he was more than happy to listen. As it got late, she began retelling him a story she’d once read of a Lady who saved her knight from a dragon. It was one of the only books she’d kept from being left behind by hiding it among the underthings she’d been allowed to take with her.

“Take the bed,” he told her when she began to yawn.

“Where will you sleep?” Belle asked. 

“I’ll sleep by the fire. It’s fine,” he assured her. “I’ve slept there many a time.”

“I won’t drive you from your own bed,” she argued.

Rumpel shook his head, leaving the table to fetch down a couple of sheepskins from the rafters with his staff. “You aren’t driving me from anything.”

He put the sheepskins and a pillow down on the hardpack floor near the hearth to make a pallet for himself. If he covered with his cloak, he would be plenty warm enough.

“I’ll need to check the sheep before we sleep,” he said, going to take said cloak from next to his bed.

Belle perched herself on the side of it, taking off her shoes. “You’ll be all right out there?”

“I keep my hand on the side of the house on the way there and back.” Rumpel smiled up at her as he tied his cloak around him. “Done it more times than I can count.”

She considered the room as he stepped out into the storm. It was nice in ways that the house she shared with her father wasn’t. A family lived here, and that wasn’t something that could be added with furniture and decoration. Rumpel and Bae’s home felt warmer and cozier, and she’d long dreaded having to go back to her own at the end of her day. She was well aware that the people who lived there were the lion’s share of what made her feel so.

Belle fiddled with the ends of the lacing at the front of her dress. They would be alone, she and Rumpel. Thanks to the weather, they’d get to be alone for the entire night.

She pulled open the bow and began loosening her bodice, setting about what was, admittedly, probably a terrible idea.

Rumpelstiltskin came back inside shivering, and he wished he’d wrapped a shawl around his shoulders, as well. At least his hood kept the snow off and he wouldn’t have to contend with damp hair before he slept. He turned right around to close the door, to keep as much warmth inside the little hovel as possible.

“The sheep are fine, though glad they’ve got fleece on their backs, I’m sure,” he said as he divested himself of his cloak once more. He reached to place it over the head of his bed again, turning toward the fire, and he discovered that Belle had moved. 

She was down on the sheepskins before the hearth. He stopped short, cloak slipping from his hand. There was little he could do to stop himself from staring. Belle’s skirt, blouse, and bodice lay across the table, leaving her in her shift and stockings, and he was absolutely certain he’d interrupted her getting ready for bed. He was making an ass of himself for looking at what he knew she didn’t intend him to see.

“I’m sorry,” he said as soon as he found his voice again. His face burned hot. “I should- I thought it would take longer. With the sheep. I- I’ll turn my back ’til you’ve gotten under the blanket.”

“I’m not getting ready for bed, Rumpel,” she said. “At least, not to sleep.”

His eyes widened. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable here?” he asked, gesturing with both hands to the bed he’d given her for the night.

“It’s warmer down by the fire. And you’re here.” She smiled up at him.

He looked from the hearth to the bed. He had hit his head. He’d fallen and hit his head on the way back in from the sheep paddock, and he was having some dream to ease his way into freezing to death. That was the source of this vision, he was sure of it.

“Come here?” she asked, holding her hand out to him.

Rumpel continued to stare for a bit longer before taking his staff from the bend of his arm. He made his way slowly over, taking the hand she offered.

Mindful of his leg, Belle drew him down beside her. He sat with his bad leg stretched out and the good one curled, foot tucked under his thigh. She took his staff, laying it down next to them, and rose onto her knees to move closer. They would begin with kisses, she thought. They’d shared a kiss before, and though it had gone awkwardly to say the least, it was somewhere to start. She curled her legs beneath her, sitting in the space that his bent one left open, placing herself as near him as she could without crawling into his lap. First things first.

She’d taken her hair down. It still draped over her shoulder, but he could see now that she’d taken the ribbon out of it, leaving her curls loose. His fingers itched to touch it, and he closed his hands to keep them from reaching. 

She leaned close, obviously meaning to kiss him. “Lady Belle,” he breathed.

“Stop calling me that,” she said, and he felt her breath on his face. “I haven’t been Lady anything for the better part of a year, now.”

“Belle,” he began again, and she leaned in quickly enough that she met his lips before he could delay her again.

She felt a gentle suction at her top lip, and she did the same to his lower one, flicking her tongue over the center of it. A soft puff of air from his nose hit her cheek in response to her daring, and she smiled against his mouth. Perhaps too soon, she reached for the laces of his trousers. 

He pulled back in shock, catching hold of her hands. “What are you doing?”

Belle smiled, leaning to kiss him again, pulling carefully at his lower lip before they parted. “I think you know what I’m doing.”

“But _why?_ Why would you?” he asked, and he looked agonized in his confusion.

“I want to.” She pried his hands gently away and tugged the leather lacings all the way out of their holes, so that she could more easily lay the fabric open. “I’ve wanted to for quite a while, Rumpel.”

She slipped her hand inside, finding that the snow hadn’t made this part of him colder in the least. Whatever protest was making its way to his lips died before it got there.

“Take these off?” Please?” she asked, and he blinked at her before moving to do as she said.

Belle helped him, pulling at his trousers as he pushed them down along with his drawers. There was a moment in which she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing, where he had to stop and take his boots off with his clothes down around his ankles. He set them up on the hearth to dry, though, and she dropped his trousers to the side.

She ran a hand up his thigh and to his groin, wrapping her hand around him. It was so warm that it was almost hot against her palm, and thicker than she’d imagined. The skin around it moved a little with her fingers. She slid her hand toward his body, and suddenly the soft, smooth head was exposed. She licked her lips, leaning in a bit. 

“What are you doing?” he asked again, whispering with some sort of fright, as though she were brandishing a weapon at him.

“I’m going to… put my mouth on you,” she said, grasping for words that were neither crude nor anything like what he’d heard from the men who ridiculed him.

 _“What?”_ he squawked, reaching to put his hands on her bare shoulders, pushing her to sit up again.

And Belle told him again, “I want to,” as she took his hands, kissing the knuckles of one before she set them on either side of him.

“I don’t understand,” he said softly, his words quick as he searched her for some explanation. No one would _want_ to do that. Not with him. He couldn’t understand why she would subject herself to him in such a way at all.

She smiled, though, and moved her free hand to push his tunic up around his ribs, so that she could lay a hand flat against his belly.

Belle gathered her courage to say more than was probably ladylike. “I want you in my mouth, Rumpel. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Y- you want-” He seemed to lose control over his words, and she grinned up at him before looking down again.

If she was going to put her mouth on it, then her tongue would certainly be involved. She decided that she may as well involve it right away, and leaned down a bit more, giving the head a lick. He made a sound as if he were dying. Belle looked up at him to find him looking back at her, eyes wide and pupils black in the firelight, his mouth gone slack.

She stroked the scattering of fine brown hair at the base, running her fingertips around and beneath, feeling the weight of all of him there in her hand. Somehow she hadn’t expected it to feel this heavy. Moving her hand up again, she ran the pad of her thumb along the bottom, beneath the head, and he groaned. It seemed to take so little to give him pleasure.

Belle thought back to what her maids said, how they talked about this. She remembered tongue and hand, and to be careful of her teeth. 

“Lie back for me?” she said, making her demand softer by toning it as a question. 

He did as she asked, leaning so that he rested with his shoulders against the pillow.

She leaned down again, opening her mouth to take the head of him between her lips while she tightened her fingers around him just a bit lower down. The muscles of his abdomen trembled, and she reveled in the way he whimpered.

“Oh gods, Belle-” he gasped. One of his hands found her hand at his belly, and his fingers curled around hers. 

He smelled like the warm scent of the precious-wood soap that he and Baelfire bathed with in the winter, and like the wool they handled together, and like the good earth around the castle that she had to leave behind. She pulled back and then took more of him into her mouth, and she tasted it as a rivulet of something thin and salty touched her tongue.

Simply performing the act of sucking him stoked a desire in her for more. She pressed her thighs together, resisting the urge to slip her hand between them as she felt herself growing wet.

In her excitement, the head bumped too far back in her mouth, and she jumped away in reflex with a gag. She caught the fearful way Rumpel looked at her, and she put a hand to her mouth to smother her laugh at her own overenthusiasm. 

“It was me, not your fault,” she said, shaking her head. 

He reached out, touching her cheek. “Please, you don’t have to.” 

The sweetness of the way he stroked along her jaw with the back of his fingers sent a delicious wave of heat through her.

“Hush,” Belle told him, and she leaned down again, returning her hand to his stomach. 

More slowly, she took him further again, curling her tongue against the underside as she made up for not being able to take him as deeply as she wanted by sucking harder each time she pulled back. 

He wanted to touch her face, to wind her curls around his fingers, but he didn’t want it to seem as if he were trying to control what she did. Rumpel held onto her hand when she laid it against his skin again, his other hand holding tight to the fleece beneath him. It felt _wonderful,_ what she did, and his head spun wildly as his breath ran short.

“Belle,” he said, his voice strained as he attempted to warn her. 

He reached down, trying to catch her arm to pull her up, but she brushed his hand away. She didn’t know, or she wouldn’t still have her mouth on him. He could finish himself with his hand, but he knew she couldn’t want what was approaching. 

“Belle, stop, I need-”

Before he could get the words out, the release of it crashed into him. He went tense all over, an intense pleasure pouring through him, forcing a groan from his throat.

Belle felt him begin to pulse against her tongue before he spilled himself. Then there was the taste of saltwater flooding her mouth, and bitter like dandelion, and an almost sweetness behind it. It wasn’t _bad,_ but she swallowed before she had too much time to think about it. She kept her mouth around him until she was certain he’d finished.

She sat back, releasing him. He stared at her in awe, trying to catch his breath.

Belle licked her lips again, finding them a bit tender. She crawled up next to him, sitting back on her heels to undo the laces at his neck. 

“Take this off,” she murmured, and she couldn’t deny the little thrill it gave her when he sat up to do as she said.

Rumpel raised his arms over his head, letting her pull the heavy tunic off him. He reached for the skirt of her shift, giving her a questioning look before he began gathering the soft material in his hands. “Mine, too,” she agreed.

He helped her to take her shift off, folding it a bit haphazardly and laying it atop his clothes to keep it clean, and he discovered that she had no more underthings beneath. There were only her white stockings and the garters holding the tops of them above her knees. He looked up at her in surprise, only to find a pleased smirk playing at her lips.

Belle stretched out beside him, curling a hand around the back of his upper arm to urge him back down again. She pressed her body against his, waiting for him to recover enough that they might enjoy a little more of their night together. His hand slid, warm and curious, up her side and over her ribcage to cup against the side of her breast. 

“You can touch me,” she whispered to him, tilting her face up to kiss him. “I want you to touch me.”

While his attention was taken by her breasts - by what felt like a very careful and affectionate exploration - she busied herself with sucking little red marks along the soft underside of his jaw. The small jolts of pleasure that hummed along her nerves with each graze of his fingertips over a nipple set her further on edge with need.

It took a while for her to feel him growing hard against her thigh, though not as long as she expected. When she moved from her side to her back, he followed her kisses, hovering over her but not moving on top as she meant him to.

“Come here?” she said, catching her foot around behind his knee to encourage him along.

“You want to…?” he began.

Belle smiled, tilting her hips to meet his. “I want all of you.”

He propped his weight on his hands to rest over her, going down on his forearms when she circled her arms around him and pulled him closer. Reaching down, he guided himself into place, and slowly shifted his hips forward.

Belle’s brow drew in discomfort as her body stretched to accommodate him for the first time, despite being _quite_ ready for him. There was no pain with the extreme care that he took, but the sensation was broad and strange, and it seemed to take over her senses.

Once their bodies pressed flush together, he stilled, waiting for her to tell him that it was all right to go on. She didn’t speak when she was ready. She wrapped her legs around him, her heels nudging him into moving. The first time he angled his hips to pull back and slid in again, she gasped so sharply that he was certain he’d hurt her. 

She caught the look in his eyes before he could try to move away from her. “No,” she said, “It’s good. Perfect.” She opened her arms from the cling she had around his shoulders, sliding them up to thread into his hair. “Keep going.”

He felt the fabric of her stockings slide along the backs of his thighs where her feet flexed and stroked as the two of them moved together, and along with everything else, it made being there with her feel like some too-lovely fever dream. Her legs tightened around him a split second before he felt her clench tight inside, and he was drawn along with her as she came. He buried his face against her neck to muffle the low groan that it dragged from him.

He moved to her side, slipping from her, and she made a small sound of protest. It was over, this first time. She knew that there was only so much they could do to keep the first time they were together going, but the desire to hold onto the moment was still there.

Belle lay in his arms, her leg draped across his waist and her arm wrapped around his back. He couldn’t stop touching her. He should, he thought - she would grow tired of his pawing at her, and all he wanted was for this to last as long as it possibly could. It would be his own fault if he annoyed her into moving away from him.

He tried to make himself stop, to stay still, but he only managed moments before his hands seemed to run along her skin as if they’d minds of their own. He nuzzled against her temple, doing his best to memorize the way her hair and skin smelled. Belle made a humming sound, and he interpreted it as irritation.

“I’m sorry,” he said, forcing the hand that skimmed fingers along her spine to lift away.

She opened her eyes, looking sleepily up at him. “What?”

“I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t stop.”

“What?” he echoed in surprise.

“Your hands - don’t stop. Please?”

He returned his hand to her back, running it along the warm expanse of skin. She made a pleased little noise, snuggling more closely against him, and he smiled into her hair. He’d thought she had fallen asleep, until she spoke again. 

“Rumpel? What do you think of the two of us… you and I…” She worried at her bottom lip until he gave her a look of concern. “Marrying?”

“Y- you don’t- I would never tell,” he promised. “You needn’t to that. I would never make you.” Who could ever _want_ to be lashed to him?

The expression that took his face was shrinking and almost frightened. Belle drew her arm from around him so that she could cup her hand to his cheek. “Rumpelstiltskin, no one is making me do _anything,”_ she told him. “I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t want it.”

“But why would you want that?” he asked. “Why would you want me? Any of this?”

“Because you’re kind, Rumpel. You’re kind, and you’re thoughtful. You work so hard to provide for your son. I could help with that. Two could thrive far more easily than one. We could help one another in so many ways…” She looked into his eyes, hoping that he could believe her. “And because I love you.”

“I love you.” The words rushed out of him on his breath. He’d hardly dared to think them, afraid of how they would cut into him when her apprenticeship was over and he only ever saw her in passing. But she spoke of marriage. “All right. If it’s what you want,” he said quietly, unable to help the hope that flickered a bit brighter.

“Is it what _you_ want, though?” Belle asked, brushing his ruffled hair away from his face. 

“It is. I want to marry you, if you’ll have me.”

“Oh, I’ll have you.” She smiled, shifting position and nudging him over so that she lay half on his chest.

He grinned, happiness and the closeness of her lightening his heart. “You want to marry me for my sheep, don’t you?”

Belle laughed, digging her fingertips gently into his ribs, making him squirm beneath her. “Yes, Rumpel. That’s precisely it. I’m marrying you for the sheep.”

Morning arrived far too soon. The snow had exhausted itself, now only falling just enough to keep the drifts on the ground from disappearing as the sun rose.

Belle stirred against him, and he loosened his arms a bit, letting her sit up. She stifled a yawn, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to his cheek, and began gathering her things.

He watched as she sorted out her clothing and dressed, and he supposed that he should put his own clothes back on. “You have to leave?” he asked, tugging his trousers on and turning one arm of his tunic right side out again.

“I need to go home for a bit. I have to check on my father.” She wiggled her foot into her shoe, and Rumpel took her cloak, holding it for her and placing it around her shoulders when she stood. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“I’ll see you then,” he said, following her to the door. She took his hand, squeezing it before she let herself out.

Morraine’s mother knocked on his door not too many minutes after Belle had gone, letting him know that Baelfire had done just fine on his overnight visit. “He wants to stay until a bit later to play. I believe it might be more that he’s looking forward to the rest of last night’s rabbit stew. Would that be all right?”

He smiled. “Of course. He should have fun. Tell him that I look forward to hearing about his visit.”

“He was a bit worried over you staying by yourself.”

“Tell him that I was all right, as well,” he said, and Morraine’s mother headed away again.

Rumpelstiltskin went to the window, taking up a station there to wait. An hour came and went. An hour and a half. His heart sank. Belle wasn’t coming back.

Of course she wasn’t. He was an idiot for ever hoping that she would. Someone as bright and shining as she was could never truly want something like him.

He couldn’t make himself move from the window, though. He watched the road that came from her house, fingers rubbing against one another in his anxiousness. Two hours. She wasn’t late. She was gone. His chest ached.

“Please,” he said under his breath. He begged to be proven wrong. “Please, please…”

And then there she was. She hurried up the road, almost running, and he could see a smile on her face even through the flurry of snow that still fell. 

Rumpel went to the door and swung it open, standing there when she came up the little dirt walk. He stepped back and Belle came in, closing the door. She followed him and stood _very_ close, tilting her head back, and it took him a moment to realize that she waited for him to kiss her. He bowed his head to meet her lips.

“You came back,” he said, soft confusion in his weathered features.

“Of course I came back.” Belle shook her head. She understood suddenly that he hadn’t expected her to. He’d assumed that she was gone forever, and it wasn’t as though she could blame him for his doubt. Not with what he must have come to expect of love.

“My father was upset that I didn’t go home last evening, and he had a lecture about reputation and propriety. I’m so sorry that I worried you.” She lifted her hands, sliding them over his shoulders and up to his neck, her fingers playing with the ends of his hair. “I’ll always come back. You’ll never be rid of me, now,” she teased him.

There was no humor in the depths of his dark eyes in that moment when he looked back at her.

“I love you,” she whispered up to him. 

She wanted to tell him that she would never leave him, that she would be with him forever, as soon as they could get forever arranged. But she was afraid that the words would ring hollow. She was rather sure he’d heard things like ‘forever’ the first go ’round. Her actions would have to speak, at least until he could believe in her words. 

He leaned to kiss her again, a bit hesitantly. When she returned the kiss with fervor, he decided to attempt what he’d been thinking of much of the time between between their night and her leaving this morning. 

“What are you doing?” she asked as he guided her gently backward to sit on the edge of his bed. “What about drop spindles? You were going to show me how to work with a drop spindle today.”

“Reciprocation,” he told her simply.

She understood precisely what he meant when he lowered carefully to his knees in front of her.

“You needn’t-” She giggled when he began gathering her skirts higher. “Rumpel, you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” he said, looking up at her.

Belle reached to cup his face between her hands, brushing a kiss against the tip of his nose. She unclasped her cloak, letting it fall behind her, and she was loosening the laces of her bodice when he tossed her skirts over the top of his head.


End file.
